The amount of monsters in a spawn

OperativeNL

So, could anyone explain to me how the # of monsters in a spawn are calculated, and whether or not this calculation is currently (after the 2010 patch) bugged?

The reason I'm asking is that I encounter almost no monsters whatsoever. I haven't made it further than the area south of the Friendly Arm In, but I have played it numerous times on EasyTuTu and I would encounter large numbers of gibberlings and xvarts. In BG:EE I encounter no enemies at all, and when I do, it's a single gibberling... or a single xvart. Even for a level 1 Charname with a level 1 Imoen, this is way too easy.

In TuTu the spawns would often be 4-6 enemies. Now it's no enemies at all or only 1. Is this intended?

If it's intended, when will the enemies start to increase in number? Right now it's hard to level up when almost never fighting... and the fights seem much less epic now... I hope the xvart village will be populated at least...

elminster

OperativeNL said:

So, could anyone explain to me how the # of monsters in a spawn are calculated, and whether or not this calculation is currently (after the 2010 patch) bugged?

The reason I'm asking is that I encounter almost no monsters whatsoever. I haven't made it further than the area south of the Friendly Arm In, but I have played it numerous times on EasyTuTu and I would encounter large numbers of gibberlings and xvarts. In BG:EE I encounter no enemies at all, and when I do, it's a single gibberling... or a single xvart. Even for a level 1 Charname with a level 1 Imoen, this is way too easy.

In TuTu the spawns would often be 4-6 enemies. Now it's no enemies at all or only 1. Is this intended?

If it's intended, when will the enemies start to increase in number? Right now it's hard to level up when almost never fighting... and the fights seem much less epic now... I hope the xvart village will be populated at least...

4-6 enemies being spawned for two level 1 characters?, no that doesn't sound right at all. That may have been how it was in BGTutu, but I would not expect those numbers at those character levels without closer to 4 people in a party.

Banex

Think this was addressed in the last patch(patch 4) and might still need tweeked but the devs are aware of this.I checked the original BG 1 vanilla earlier and this was the same,if not worse.I think a lot of us were spoiled by the mods available for Bg1.So this might not be a bug but more of a request we are asking for to tweek the enemy spawns up.The more brutal,the better the gameplay,in my opinion.

BelgarathMTH

The area south of the FAI is hard-coded in numbers, and does not use the spawn algorithm. You cannot use this area to test spawning. It was Tutu and BGT that recoded this area to always spawn groups of six.

The new algorithm as of version 2010 bases spawns on party level, but only in areas other than the south of the FAI that have not yet been visited. It will not overwrite saves, so any area you visited before installing the patch will not be using the new algorithm.

OperativeNL

Thank you @belgarathmth, that does clear up a lot. Hopefully the other spawns should be more fitting to my abilities!

bigboned

I killed around 100 kobolds in Firewine Bridge dungeon.. They just spawn out of thin air.. I don't even have to move.. Just wait and you'll get kobold after kobold attacking.. Something is seriously wrong..

valky

bigboned said:

I killed around 100 kobolds in Firewine Bridge dungeon.. They just spawn out of thin air.. I don't even have to move.. Just wait and you'll get kobold after kobold attacking.. Something is seriously wrong..

Firewine-Bridge Dungeon is just annoying. I usually go thru the secret door in the village, kill both mages and leave that hole.
And some spawns in most areas are strange; compared with the Gamebanshee maps, which show usually every monster. Sometimes there is nothing but if I kill something else on the map, go back to that point the spawn suddenly appears or is already present (without reloading/resting...)

And another weird example is Nashkel Mines: You either get 1-3 Winter Wolfs based on your level or 8-10 Kobolds (not based on your level). The latter do 'sometimes' pretty nasty damage if you ie go there with a level 1 party to gather some pelts & XP *whistle* ..

BelgarathMTH

I have noticed a very, very fast respawn rate in BG:EE, also. Sometimes I will kill, say, a wolf, or a lone hobgoblin archer, walk to another part of the same map, then walk back over the area where I killed the wolf or hobgob, and there will already be another one there! I've stacked up piles of three or four bodies where the same creature respawned that many times.

I don't know if it was intentional or not, but I actually like it. It makes me be much more alert and careful while walking around in wilderness areas and dungeons. No more just setting a walk-point at an exit and going out to lunch while my party walks across the map, because now I know there will probably be at least one random encounter along the way. It increases fun and challenge for me.

Plus, I think it's more realistic. If an area is populated by wolves and hobgoblins, there should always be more of them around where the first ones came from. You really wouldn't be able to just kill x creatures, and then safely assume you had destroyed the entire population of the area.

elminster

belgarathmth said:

I have noticed a very, very fast respawn rate in BG:EE, also. Sometimes I will kill, say, a wolf, or a lone hobgoblin archer, walk to another part of the same map, then walk back over the area where I killed the wolf or hobgob, and there will already be another one there! I've stacked up piles of three or four bodies where the same creature respawned that many times.

I don't know if it was intentional or not, but I actually like it. It makes me be much more alert and careful while walking around in wilderness areas and dungeons. No more just setting a walk-point at an exit and going out to lunch while my party walks across the map, because now I know there will probably be at least one random encounter along the way. It increases fun and challenge for me.

Plus, I think it's more realistic. If an area is populated by wolves and hobgoblins, there should always be more of them around where the first ones came from. You really wouldn't be able to just kill x creatures, and then safely assume you had destroyed the entire population of the area.

Yea I actually like it in a way too. It means the maps never are guaranteed to be completely empty.

Rohndil

Pack of BEARS!